Roku Kicks Off Virtual NewFronts With Tools To Help Advertisers Weather Pandemic

Tubefilter’s coverage of the 2020 IAB NewFronts is brought to you in partnership with BEN – an entertainment AI company that integrates brands into influencer, streaming, TV, music, and film content. You can check out all our NewFronts coverage right here. 

Roku kicked off the first virtual NewFronts today by unveiling the myriad ad tools it’s offering to help marketers meet uncertain times.

Roku, a smart TV device manufacturer and platform, notes that streaming is soaring while linear TV vewership has plummeted to its lowest levels since 1995 in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic — with sports and other programming indefinitely on hold. At the same time, the company acknowledged that while some businesses have been boosted by the pandemic — think Netflix, Amazon, and cleaning product makers — many others have had to cut costs drastically or shutter their businesses altogether.

To this end, the company has unveiled a so-called ‘Agile Investment Plan‘ that will offer marketers a number of editing features and purchasing safeguards. First, Roku will offer overlays on both TV and streaming ads, enabling marketers to adapt or enhance national ad buys. The company will also let marketers take national buys dark in any zip code within 24 hours if local regulations affecting businesses change. Roku is also rolling out a new product called ‘Roku Reserve‘, letting advertisers to place adds on the platform’s top 1% of channels.

Other new ad offerings include a new ‘OneView‘ platform that helps avoid ad collision and manages daily frequency, Roku says, as well ‘incremental reach guarantees’ — meaning that marketers will now only pay for unduplicated reach to linear TV viewers.

Ad buyers can continue to follow along with recent case studies, content previews, and other Roku insights via a newly-launched ‘Upfront Hub‘, which will live on a private channel on all Roku devices.

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